The German Football Association (DFB) governing body has today (July 25) announced the opening of the tender for domestic media rights covering the Frauen-Bundesliga top-tier women’s league between 2023-24 and 2026-27.
The tender is for the four seasons from next August onwards, and companies can register their interest by contacting ausschreibung.medienrechte@dfb.de.
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The registration period is now open, and tender documents will be sent out to registered firms from August 4 onwards. The DFB has said that, in terms of a final decision on the allocation of the rights, this will happen “probably in early October," after a consulting period in September.
MagentaTV, the over-the-top platform owned by German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom, has held rights to the Frauen Bundesliga since 2017-18, with the original deal worth €16 million ($19.3 million) per year. It covered all 132 matches from the 12-team league live in 2021-22, and will do so again during 2022-23, which will start in mid-September.
Coverage will also be available on pan-European sports broadcaster Eurosport, which will continue to show one live fixture per round.
The tender (alongside one for domestic rights to the men’s 3.Liga taking place to the same timescale), includes “three scenarios for different packaging of the live matches for free and/or pay-TV.”
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By GlobalDataOnly one of these three separate scenarios will then be chosen, however.
As well as this, three packages will be offered for both linear and non-linear highlights, which can also both be exploited across pay-TV and free-to-air.”
Holger Blask, managing director at DFB GmbH, said: “The Frauen-Bundesliga has also recently achieved continuous growth and significantly increased visibility, especially through the expansion of its TV presence. Women’s soccer as a whole is currently receiving additional attention … we want to carry this forward into the Frauen-Bundesliga as well.”
He added: “We have developed clearly structured and attractive rights packages. They reflect the interests of the various market players and are intended to enable the successful buyers to create modern and user-friendly media offers in the fans’ interest …”
Blask also commented on the highlights packages on offer: “Among other things, the rights packages are enriched by clip and highlight offers in such a way that every media usage behavior – live, time-delayed or on-demand – can be optimally taken into account.”
In terms of international coverage for the upcoming 2022-23 season of the Frauen-Bundesliga, eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the Baltic states and Central America are some of the regions in which broadcast deals have been struck.
The DFB, meanwhile, entered into a multi-year streaming and data rights tie-up with IMG Arena, the betting arms of the international sports and entertainment giant, last month, covering streaming and “fastpath data” rights from all matches in the German men’s club soccer’s knockout DFB Pokal cup competition.
Although a new arrangement, the deal is an expansion of an existing relationship between the DFB and IMG Arena. The pair also collaborate around the third-tier 3. Liga and the women’s top-tier Frauen-Bundesliga in a similar data rights agreement.
The DFB began the tender process for allocating these global betting data and audiovisual betting streaming rights for the 2022-23 to 2025-26 Pokal cycle in early May.
